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Aug 21, 1983: Voices tell the story
By VERA Files | The Inbox – 21 hours ago

 

Aquino and Galman on the airport tarmac


By Luz Rimban, VERA Files


The tape recording starts with the sound of the plane landing and people talking among themselves.

"Everybody remains on board," one of them says.

Moments later, a single gunshot rings out and women are wailing.

"What happened? What was that?" a woman's voice asks.

More gunshots. The wailing becomes louder.

Then an order from several men: "Inside, inside, inside!"

"The soldiers… shot Ninoy. He's dead out there," a woman cries out.

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For the past 20 years, Burton’s recording has been in the Sandiganbayan’s custody, forming part of the evidence—20,000 pages of documents, hundreds of photographs, video and audio recordings—the court had collected in the course of the trial against the military men involved in Aquino’s assassination.

For the first time, the Sandiganbayan has made the recording available for broadcast. A portion of it will be heard on the ABS-CBN documentary "Agosto Beinte Uno: Ang Pagpatay kay Ninoy Aquino" commemorating the slain senator's 30th death anniversary.

The sounds on Burton’s tape capture the atmosphere in the plane in the final seconds before Aquino disembarks, the moment he is shot, and the passengers’ reactions when they realized that the person they had just shared a flight with was now dead on the tarmac.

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The proof they presented to the Supreme Court: the statement made by former Deputy Tanodbayan Manuel Herrera, chief of the prosecution panel in the Aquino case, that ousted president Ferdinand Marcos had influenced the Tanodbayan (now the Ombudsman) and the Sandiganbayan into acquitting all respondents, including Marcos' trusted ally and friend, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian C. Ver.

"Magmoro-moro na lang kayo (You just put up a show)," Herrera quoted Marcos saying in a two-hour meeting with justices and prosecutors in Malacanang when the case started.

Marcos’ parting words, according to Herrera, were: “Thank you for your cooperation. I know how to reciprocate.”

Herrera said the trial was scripted, right from the start when the case was assigned in a "make-believe raffle" done in the absence of the media to the installation of TV monitors beaming the trial directly to Malacanang, and the suppression of vital evidence.

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The court decided to listen to it in the sound studio of former actor Jose Mari Gonzales in San Juan. The studio was packed with the usual courtroom crowd—court personnel, prosecutors, defense attorneys, witnesses.

"I remember they decided to dim the lights so that those listening could focus on the tape," said Bautista, who is also ABS-CBN legal counsel. "And shortly before the tape was played, the room fell silent. And I found myself standing in a corner right beside this big speaker."

Burton’s tape records faintly the sound of someone saying, “Eto na (This is it).” Footage shot by a foreign TV crew captures the words by now familiar to Filipinos who lived through the events surrounding the Aquino assassination. "Eto na, eto na! Ako na, ako na! Op! Pusila, pusila (This is it, this is it! Let me, let me! Shoot, shoot)!"

And then, the gunshot.

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The tape also captures Burton and her fellow passengers after they had disembarked and ran into people waiting to meet the passengers from the China Airlines flight.

Local journalists who covered the airport at the time had been herded by military men to the entrance to the tube where they were to await Aquino. When they learned of the commotion at the tarmac, they interviewed the disembarking passengers to ask them what happened.

One conversation was that of Burton and a Filipino.

Man: “What did you see? Who did it?”

Burton: “Soldiers.”

Man: “How many of them?”

Burton: “I don’t know. I think we’d better wait.”

Man: “Did you recognize him? Aquino?”

Burton: “Yeah.”

Man: “What’s your name?”

Burton: “No, I’m not gonna... this is not the place to talk. We had just seen two assassinations take place right outside our window.”

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The Sandiganbayan had declared C1C Rogelio Moreno, a constable and one of those who fetched Aquino from the China Airline plane, as the gunman.

It was Moreno who shot Aquino, the court said, based on the bullet’s downward trajectory—entering just below the left ear and exiting through his chin. Moreno was behind and to the left of Aquino as they were descending the stairs.

Moreno and 15 others were convicted and served time. The soldiers have maintained innocence and insisted that the assassin was Rolando Galman, who managed to penetrate the tight security cordon and waited for Aquino under the stairs. Galman was in turn riddled with bullets.

It is the same story pushed by Marcos as early as the evening of Aug. 21, 1983. Marcos said Galman was a communist hitman.

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